


my soul seeks but i cannot find

by lisslynae



Category: Dr. Who
Genre: After Death in Heaven, Why??, ignores Christmas Special trailer, not-so-fix-it fic, resolution fic, too many Doctor feels, why did they both lie?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 11:52:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2691962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisslynae/pseuds/lisslynae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The paintings on the wall should have made her happy, but they did not mention that The Seeker was exhausted, in pain, and always narrowly avoiding the Doctor, who knew only that some anomaly was fleeing through time and space, causing and fixing troubles that should have been his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my soul seeks but i cannot find

**Author's Note:**

> I was very hurt by the finale :) Honestly, this past season was thrilling for me, as we got to watch Clara evolve as a character. At the beginning of the series, she would not have been capable of the lies she told at the end. I'm not sure if that is growth, or callousness, but those lies became a huge part of her. I sort of wondered what would have happened if she had let them shape her, and if her pragmatism had won the day. I like Clara, I really do, and could not help but make her the sort of wounded almost-hero that she could be.

It was only weeks before she realized she could look for Gallifrey. The vortex manipulator was dangerous, sure, but not that dangerous. And she did not need to find the Doctor. There were thousands of other Time Lords now, and maybe they all took companions, and she could fly the universe (safely) with someone who did not know when she was lying, or (never) someone she did not need to lie to. Instead, the manipulator hovered her in empty space for a split second, terrifying and heartbreaking, before the safety feature sent her back to where she came from. They had both been lying, she realized, sinking to the middle of her living room floor. Both lying to make the other happy, apparently, and so utterly failing. 

She began to look for Gallifrey in earnest then. Her job with UNIT was 9 to 5, and every hour she was not at work was days or weeks of combing galaxies for Gallifrey. She would come to work on a Friday and be six months older than when she had left on Thursday. Odd was so typical in UNIT though that no one noticed. The lines around her eyes grew deeper, and the burning pain of using an ancient vortex manipulator faded to a constant dull ache. In one jaunt, to a far side of a galaxy, far in the future, she found legends of The Seeker, and found it was her, all her travels and words memorialized in a title. As she traversed worlds, running and crying and helping and saving, and always looking, she became a legend. The paintings on the wall should have made her happy, but they did not mention that The Seeker was exhausted, in pain, and always narrowly avoiding the Doctor, who knew only that some anomaly was fleeing through time and space, causing and fixing troubles that should have been his. 

She found Gallifrey, finally. She was no longer sure how long she had lived. She had flown through centuries, always popping home precisely, and she supposed that, on earth, it had been a year or two, but on the last planet with decent hairstylists she had gotten the gray artfully covered, and the last time she had seen River the professor had looked at her with concern. She wished it was a surprise when Missy sauntered from around a building and gaped at her. It had been longer for the Time Lady, she realized with malicious glee. 

“The Seeker.” Missy hissed in shock. “Seeking Gallifrey. And finding it!”

Clara’s smile was decades of accumulated ice and steel, and her nod was that of a queen. “Finding it first, even. Or faster, at least.” 

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked cheerfully. “You were last time.”

She could still be light and sweet. “No. I don’t need to anymore.” Her grin was predatory. “I can do ever so much worse. Seeker, remember? I’ve not been just jaunting around. If I can kill Daleks and Cybermen I shan’t need to kill you.” She slipped around the corner, leaving her to gaze at where she had been.

She had helped the Doctor steal the TARDIS once upon centuries ago, and taking her own was not so hard. She was no telepath, and no Time Lord, but they adjusted. It was, she decided, a point of pride with her TARDIS to outclass the manipulator, so they found out how to work with one another. She called it, or him, or her “Darling” and “Sweetheart” and could talk her Darling into anything. The legends swelled, and she got better at evading the Doctor, better at popping in and out of places she did not belong, better at almost everything except not getting older. The gray was not so easy to hide, and she had aged almost 30 years, and only been to “her” earth three times since. 

But the Doctor finally caught up. She was too old to run anymore, not to say she stopped trying. He looked no different, which was no surprise, but now she looked of an age with him. He recognized her still, though, and shoved coffee into her hand and seated her in a funny little 1960s cafe booth.

“Is this my fault?” he asked in exhaustion. 

She took a long drink of coffee as he watched. “No more than it is mine.” she answered finally. “Or Missy’s, not that she’ll do it again.” she added, with an old ghost of a smile.

“Is it her TARDIS you have?” he asked sharply.

“Did I kill her and take it, you mean.” she retorts. “No, Darling is mine, and your dear friend is alive, well, and maybe taking over Gallifrey. Different coordinates, though, you know.” she added lightly.

“And where is P.E?” he snapped, grabbing at his last available weapon.

The burnt-out bracelet is still along her arm next to her vortex manipulator and she runs it up and down her arm in front of his face. “It worked once. You couldn’t kill your friend, you did not find Gallifrey, and he would never use that once on himself.” She finished the last of her coffee and stood.

The Doctor grabbed her arm. “Where is it?” he demanded.

“Gallifrey or your crazy pal?” she queried mildly. “Because they’re both fine. Did you find me to interrogate me, or apologize for lying, because you’ve successfully done neither.”

The legends that named her Seeker called him the Oncoming Storm, and she saw it gather in his eyes. 

“No.” she answered. “No, all right? I’m too old and too tired to be scared by you. Have Gallifrey, I never wanted it anyway. I’ve been the Seeker so long I don’t even know what I’m seeking anymore.” She scribbled coordinates on his arm with a pen out of his pocket. “Are you happy now?” she snapped. Once, maybe, she would not have been so harsh, but she had watched him, helped him, choose what made them both old, bitter liars. 

“You’re dying.” he exclaimed suddenly.

She pinched her lips and kept walking.

“Have you seen all the places in your book? Do you like what you have done?” he insisted, trailing after her down an alley.

Her smile as she turns is the smile she gave him, younger, floppier him, the first time they saved world, but then it twists. “Doctor, clever boy, I’ve become you, only quicker. I had to be fast, to do all you have done in one of my lives. My book is on your TARDIS, or didn’t you know? Because that is where Clara Oswald was. The Seeker found Gallifrey, found the Mistress, found the Doctor again, and has destroyed some of the places in my book.” She grins, giddy as a girl again, spinning in front of her TARDIS. “I did it, you know. Everything. I’ve been places you can never dream of. Donna Noble? Remember her? I took her a couple of places. She liked it. Couldn’t give her everything, but an adventure or two to remember, well. And I’ve got a couple friends in New York if I pop back a few years. The Williams ring any bells? Not actually the Ponds. I go there for Christmas.” She is being willfully cruel, but bitterness supersedes sense. “How ‘bout John and Rose Smith? Parallel universes are awfully tricky, but not impossible. They’ve got two kids. Cute little buggers. And of course you remember your wives. River and I have a coffee date in a couple days. I’ll tell her hi. And Elizabeth I would not mind a visit, but you don’t, do you. That’s what I’ve been seeking, you know. The truth, and happiness. I’ve found the truth for me, and happiness for them.” She nods at his arm. “I can’t give you the location for either of those.”

She slides the door to her TARDIS open and stands in the doorway. “Find it, won’t you?”

“You’re dying.” he repeats softly.

“The Seeker has found what she sought, and can die in peace. The Impossible Girl might have done everything she needs, but if she hasn’t, she will.” Her smile is sweet and small. “There’s more of me yet. Find one, yeah? and call her Impossible Girl, and run all over the universe together. There’s at least one that won’t need to die to save you now.” She steps toward him, no hugging still, and she knows it, but she stands on tip-toe to brush her wrinkled lips against his cheek. “Goodbye. Run, my clever boy, and remember.”

She spins and dashes into her TARDIS, and dematerialises in front of him. He looks at his arm, and yanks his sleeve down decisively, off to follow her advice.

It is centuries before he lands on Gallifrey to stay. There, on a hill, is a stone that reads in every known language “The Seeker”, and in a ledge is a vortex manipulator, a burnt-out bracelet, and to the left of the stone is a TARDIS that, legend has it, has not moved since its first and last passenger was laid to rest. When the Doctor makes his way down the hill a book has joined the other two relics in the ledge.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are much appreciated!


End file.
